Political punch long overdue

A Sydney sports doctor told me this week that he is astounded how many healthy young men now come in asking for steroids.

The fact that prescribing steroids in such cases would be illegal doesn’t deter them. And when most doctors reject the requests, the patients turn to a booming black market. There are plenty of street dealers.

Assuming you look like a potential customer, just ask around at some of the more disreputable gyms (I won’t bother). But anyone can look at the muscles on proud display.

Getting artificial help to build physical strength may only rarely translate into the sort of brutal attacks now creating so much public concern in NSW in particular.

But it’s still part of an Australia-wide culture where random violence has become intimately associated with a fashion for looking and acting “tough" – compounded by alcohol and drugs. That is not an entirely new combination, of course. But it has become more virulent.

And although it took too long, NSW Premier
Barry O’Farrell
has finally recognised the need to do something substantive to resist this rising tide in some of Sydney’s popular nightspots.

There’s certainly no good reason, for example, why it should feel safer to wander round Times Square at night than around Kings Cross. Yet it does because, astonishingly, it is.

That’s after New York City decided years ago it had to develop a zero-tolerance approach to reducing crime, especially in areas frequented by tourists. The refusal to accept relatively minor and unrelated incidents of unacceptable behaviour had a cumulative effect on curbing more significant offences such as muggings and, of course, shootings.

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The result is that Times Square of an evening – despite all the bars and bizarre offerings – feels more like a slightly seedy funfair where the biggest risk is making progress though the throngs of people.

Community outrage fuels action

O’Farrell’s conversion should hopefully show similar results, despite being imposed on a very different political and cultural tradition. It won’t suddenly stop steroid use or drunken brawling or binge drinking. But it should help limit the extent of dangerous, vicious attacks that have become more common in Australia in the past few years. It will also punish much more severely those who still think (to the extent they do think) that they can get away with it.

This problem is not confined to NSW, and various state governments are tackling aggressive behaviour with a range of measures and trading restrictions. But the NSW shift is the most dramatic. That’s partly in response to the community outrage at the separate deaths of two innocent teenagers in Kings Cross – the most recent fatal assault occurring on New Year’s Eve with the killing of 18-year-old Daniel Christie.

This unhappy pattern of random attacks may mean the O’Farrell government becomes the unlikely standard bearer of national change in this area. The fact that O’Farrell’s dramatic response will be so popular with voters should help persuade more of his peers to follow suit – and community sentiment.

The NSW Parliament will be brought back next week to try to pass the legislation.

The new NSW laws will lock out patrons from 1.30 am and ensure alcohol can’t be served after 3 am in the main CBD entertainment precincts. There will also be mandatory minimum sentences for attacks involving alcohol and drugs, including eight years for fatal one-punch attacks and three years for recklessly causing bodily harm.

This is a direct response to the lenient sentence recently given to the man who killed another 18-year-old, Thomas Kelly, in Kings Cross in 2012. O’Farrell was careful to say that if the judiciary refused to use the powers made available by successive state governments, judges should not be surprised at the imposition of mandatory sentencing.

Combination of measures required

Success will inevitably require a more ubiquitous and invasive police presence. But it’s the combination of measures that will be the most powerful deterrent.

Being drunk will no longer be allowed to be a mitigating factor in sentencing. There will be an increase in on-the-spot fines for antisocial behaviour. Police will be given the power to conduct drug and alcohol testing if they suspect someone has committed an assault.

Illegal supply and possession of steroids will also attract a maximum 25-year sentence – in line with Victoria’s laws – rather than the current two-year maximum in NSW. Bottle shops state-wide will have to close at 10 pm. Free buses will now leave Kings Cross every 10 minutes, and there will be a new social media and advertising campaign aimed at alcohol-fuelled violence.

The Australian Hotels Association is, naturally, complaining about the unfairness and the economic impact of 1.30 am lockouts and 3 am limits on serving alcohol. Small bars will be exempted, as will Star Casino and the new hotel and casino planned for the massive development at Barangaroo on Sydney Harbour.

O’Farrell insists he’s not out to penalise responsible drinkers, but merely attacking the irresponsible acts of those intoxicated by drugs or alcohol. This hardline argument won’t persuade everyone. And the Premier took some time to persuade himself, initially downplaying the significance of restricted trading hours.

Much of the threat on the streets, after all, comes from people “fuelling up" early and cheaply at home. That is much harder to control – as is the social acceptance of regular binge drinking.

But what is more surprising is that it has taken so long for politicians to appreciate the public’s demand for real change rather than talk. That’s not knee-jerk. It’s democracy in action.